In this lesson you will be learning grooves in 5/8 that are built around a syncopated rhythm. To achieve this you will come away from the standard groupings of this time signature by playing sixteenth notes in a '2233' pattern. The '233' rhythm is one that has been explored in many different ways through the last few levels so you will hopefully be fairly familiar with a lot of the content on this page. This new rhythm can be thought of an extention of this '233' pattern that has an extra two sixteenth notes at the start.
At the bottom of the page you will find a list of links to other lessons that may be useful in learning the parts on this page. If you are unfamiliar with describing rhythms with numbers this is explained in several of those lessons.
To build up the grooves on this page you first need to be familiar with the base rhythm. This is obviously described by the numbering but this is notated below with phrase markings and accents to clarify the grouping.
Spend some time getting familiar with this base rhythm as everything on this page relies on this grouping of sixteenth notes.
The groove patterns on this page are all constructed by orchestrating this rhythm in two different forms then applying right hands in various different ways. There are obviously many other ways this rhythm can be applied but they will explored in other lessons. For the first orchestration, the first note of the grouping will be played on the snare then the other notes will be on kicks. Like this:
The second version of this is the exact reverse. So the first note is played on a kick and the rest on the snare. Like this:
Again, spend time familiarizing yourself with these two parts to get a feel for the new time signature. Listed below are several versions of these parts with right hands applied, a note has been included in each to explain what the right hand is doing.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
Example 7
Example 8
TASK
- Learn all grooves upto a tempo of at least 125bpm.
- Experiment with different orchestrations of the base rhythm.
- Apply different right hand rhythms and orchestrations.
- Apply these pattern within a longer phrase.
